I find this fascinating, and rightly decided by the jury. I can find no justifiable reason to charge a nurse, who is reporting unethical behavior by a doctor, with criminal charges. This is something that should never even be in the criminal justice system, but handled by the civil courts, and if I was a dreamer I'd let myself believe that this is a step to moving more "crimes" into the civil court system.

I'm with Mistero. Complaints like this can have a huge impact on a doctor. Imagine if a student falsely accused a teacher of inappropriate behavior. Even if completely false it would have a very negative effect that would never go away.

It sounds like that nurse didn't like this doctor telling patients about herbal remedies or something. This doesn't sound like anything other than a philosophical difference to treatment, and that doesn't make the doctor wrong.

If this doctor is practicing within the standard of care (and there's no evidence here that he isn't) then the nurse should absolutely be held accountable for the stress and distraction she no doubt brought.

jfiling wrote:I find this fascinating, and rightly decided by the jury. I can find no justifiable reason to charge a nurse, who is reporting unethical behavior by a doctor, with criminal charges. This is something that should never even be in the criminal justice system, but handled by the civil courts, and if I was a dreamer I'd let myself believe that this is a step to moving more "crimes" into the civil court system.

I totally agree that there should never be charges against someone blowing the whistle on unethical behavior. Totally in agreement. However, in this case, was the doctor really using unethical behavior? If someone has an axe to grind and calls in a false tip, than yes, prosecute this person. In this case, who knows because there is a lot of history missing. I wish the article would have provided more information on the actual charges and complaints against this doctor than a sentence or two.

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Just to clarify, she had criminal charges filed against her for filing an anonymous report with the state's medical board. She didn't file a suit against the doctor, nor seek criminal charges against him. She merely stated her concerns about his behavior, and was then nailed with criminal charges for making the information known to the state medical board in the first place. I'm not making her out to be some sort of martyr, but she seems to have the facts in her favor. From the last paragraph of the story:

In September, investigators from the Department of State Health Services went to the hospital and found several medical procedure violations by Arafiles, according to their report. The investigation is ongoing.